Homeless vet: 'Without the VTH, I'd probably be dead'

Saturday

Mar 18, 2017 at 9:00 PMMar 19, 2017 at 6:06 PM

By Wesley Sykes, wsykes@s-t.com

This is one story in an ongoing series about people "Living on the Edge" — individuals who are homeless, in danger of losing their homes or regaining shelter and moving forward after falling into homelessness.

NEW BEDFORD — At his lowest point Joe Mulcahy began most mornings by washing down a handful of 5 mg Valiums with a swig of booze left over from the night before.

He’d fall back in his bed and wait for the world to stop spinning. He’d then make his way to the fridge and pull out a pint of Southern Comfort and put a trash bin between his legs. A sip from the pint was followed with a spew of vomit. He’d repeat this routine until he could hold down the syrupy liquor — usually taking about half a pint to do so — to prep his stomach for a full day of drinking.

Then he would be ready to start his day.

An average day consisted of two 12-packs of Bud Light, two pints of Southern Comfort and “way too many” 5 milligram Valiums, he said. When the Valium would leave him too low, he’d buy cocaine. When he’d be too high from the cocaine, he’d level himself out with more Valium.

Mulcahy, 62, is an Army veteran who was stationed in Germany for two years from 1972 to 1974 during the tail end of the Vietnam War.

“I was a drunk before I got in the Army. I was a drunk in the Army and I was a drunk after the Army,” he said sitting in his leather chair in the dimly lit living room of his New Bedford apartment.

On March 12, 2013, Mulcahy was at the Brockton VA detox center when he was told by his landlord that he wouldn’t be allowed back in his apartment due to numerous visits from the ambulance. Upon telling the doctor that he was homeless once again and had nowhere to go, the doctor asked if he had heard of the Veteran’s Transition House in New Bedford.

A friend had previously told him if things ever went bad again, that the VTH in New Bedford was a good place to go. On March 19, 2013, Mulcahy, who had been living around the MetrowWest area for most of his life, came to New Bedford for the first time.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been homeless,” he said. “I got nowhere to go, but I was fighting it all the way.”

Being back in a transition house wasn’t the only thing he was fighting. The withdrawal from his Valium and alcohol use had left him crippled with pain. For the first two weeks at the VTH he needed to hold on to both railings to guide his way up and down the stairs.

“I remember the day he came in,” Jesse Powers, the grant per diem director at the VTH, said. “He was shaking. He was scatter-brained. He was speaking really fast and just really skinny. I actually didn’t think he was going to make the first 30 days here he was just that sick.”

Mulcahy would sit in on meetings, sessions he had penned as ‘Gripes and Gratitudes,’ and recite the same response at the end: “I love the group. I love you guys, but I hate being here. I want to leave”.

But he never left. About six weeks into his stay at the VTH he was sitting out on the patio by himself one night when a thought ran across his mind.

“I hadn’t made one right decision in the last 12 to 14 years,” he said. “Maybe it’s time I let someone else make the decisions for me.”

That night he slept soundly for the first time in a long time. From the next day forward he did whatever he was told and didn’t question anything. He went with the flow and accepted the process.

“He was willing to learn,” said Analia Cabral, a licensed social worker and case worker at the VTH. “There comes a point in their lives where they realize that their way isn’t working. And that’s when we’re truly able to do our jobs.”

Mulcahy knew his way wasn’t working. He had bounced around from sober houses in Billerica and Haverhill and with stops in Framingham, Milford and Manchester, New Hampshire as well. Sometimes he’d stay with his sister Patty, sometimes he’d have a place of his own. He had met his wife in a detox program, a woman he was married to for 10 years. She was also an alcoholic.

In May of 1998, Mulcahy was enrolled in Notre Dame College in Manchester when he turned to his wife, both sober for five years at that point, and said he felt like having a drink.

“By the next year I had lost everything. I quit school. A three-family home I owned was down the tube. Three dogs gone. Two birds gone. Wife gone. My freedom was gone,” he said.

From the day he picked up the bottle again until he entered the detox center in Brockton in 2013 was a “horror show.”

“I was saturated in alcohol,” he recalled. “I never had any periods of sobriety in that time. I didn’t have any periods of good, really.”

According to Powers, there are three types of people who enter the VTH: one who has had everything and lost it all; one who has everything and lost nothing yet; and one who has never had anything. Mulcahy fell into the first category.

Because he had the experience of having and losing his life, he had more realistic expectations of what to get out of being at the VTH.

“Joe’s a purpose-based person,” Powers said. “He knows what his happiness entails. He just wants to wake up every day and have a job he can go to, go to a couple of meetings, help a few people, drink some coffee and smoke some cigarettes. That’s it.”

After spending 25 months in the system of the VTH he’s doing all of that now. He works 20 hours a week at the front desk of the VTH. He has his own place on South Sixth Street, a building owned by the VTH for permanent housing of veterans.

The first morning he woke up in his own apartment, he felt a panicky itch growing inside him.

“When I’m on my own is when I get in trouble,” he said.

But he is a different man than the one who entered the VTH four years ago. When that familiar feeling crept in that caused him to drink in the past, he began reasoning with himself. “I realized there was no difference from when I woke up the day before at the VTH and when I woke up in my own place that day.”

Instead of succumbing to addiction he simply went about his daily routine. He had his coffee. He smoked his cigarette. He had a bowl of cereal. He went down the street to pick up the papers. By the time he returned home, the itch was gone.

“There’s probably only been four people off the top of my head that I wasn’t worried about when they left here,” Powers said. “Joe is one of them.”

Sunday, March 13 was the four-year anniversary of Mulcahy’s sobriety. Like most who’ve battled with addiction, he knows he’s only as good as the moment he’s currently living in. But where he is now is in a far better place than when he first came to VTH four years ago.

“Without the VTH I wouldn’t be sober today. I’d probably be dead,” he said. “The VTH saved my life. Simple as that.”

Follow Wesley Sykes on Twitter @WesleySykes_SCT

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.